1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your business 

I am Amy Knight-Dawson, owner of Scribe Consulting and director at assisting tourist businesses with growth, specifically with strategy and marketing. 

I look after a range of clients in the tourist industry from boutique hotels to tour operators and safari companies. All of them need some sort of support with either their marketing or their business strategy. 

As a result, I felt the need to be able to scale my business. I needed more support in order to handle the enquiries and the volume of business so I required a partner who offers a high level of service and qualified staff. 

I was actually introduced to PrimePixels by a friend in the industry who was really singing praises. But she uses PrimePixels for a virtual PA, so I was delighted when she told me that there’s also the option for Marketing Assistance as well, which has really helped change my business in the last few months. 

2. Why did you decide to outsource your business’ social media activities? You mentioned scaling your business and working with a group of professionals, was that the main motivation?

Yeah, exactly that. As my business grows, I start to have a more varied menu of services as well as having a larger reach. As more people start to hear about me, I realised what I’ve started doing with PrimePixels may as well branch out. 

I’m looking at starting new projects such as developing training programs, ebooks, etc, so I just find a huge amount of value in the fact that I got a partner that I can really rely on. It’s not easy to find people who have got a real tourism mindset within the content/digital marketing field. 

I must say with the level of interaction that I’ve had with PrimePixels to date, it’s really paid off in terms of only having to coach them a little bit here and there. 

Working with a dedicated team also really helps, with one person managing all their interactions. I work with my account manager and she will then communicate to the team who are working on various things for me, whether it be social media or copywriting. 

Potentially they’ll also do some website work, ebooks and training programs. So that helps to keep it cohesive and seamless which I enjoy.

3. What is it like to work with a remote team of people? 

My experience comes down to the people I have come in contact with and everybody at PrimePixels have been so professional. There’s never been a time where I felt like I’ve been left hanging. I can count on them to be responsive and agile in any situation while doing as much as possible with a very professional undertone. 

It’s much more about the characters than it is about the characteristics because at the end of the day you can learn a skill, but you can’t teach character. What I see at PrimePixels is really amazing, the type of characters that are attracted to the organisation are experienced, service-minded, thorough and are willing to go the extra mile. 

Yeah, there have been a few bumps in the road but great communication and iterating as you go can help so much. Also, there’s a mutual respect of focusing on the end goal, which is to excel and to deliver beyond your client’s expectations. That is a mutual goal I believe in and in my experience and it has been great to work with like-minded people.

4. What are some of the typical tasks you delegate to the account manager? 

We work a lot at the moment with social media and content marketing. So my account manager manages the copywriting requirements and delegates that to the team. She will also delegate quotes, requests and field queries that I may have with finance and invoicing for example. 

5. Lastly, as an entrepreneur, what is some advice you would give to others looking to outsource work? 

1. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and don’t assume they know your business inside and out as you do. You need to allow for turnaround time and you need to ask those questions upfront. You can’t expect that your deliverables will be their deliverables because you have to accommodate the supply chain.

So just recognising that from the outside really helps because you need to build that into your delivery and turn line to your client. So you must always allow for a bit of back and forth. Once you get the hang of it in terms of your work scheduling and being methodical about it, you can find real rest in that structure.

The team is very much on top of keeping tabs on how much time you have left on your account, what the next items are and helping you to keep straight.

2. However, you still need to be the one with the master plan. You can’t simply ponder off to them and be hands-off because that’s going to have disastrous consequences. You need to be aware that you are still very much driving the ship and although they are the best first mates you’ll have, you are still very much in command.

3. You need to make allowance for the fact that they are there to support you, but they cannot know everything there is to know about your business because they are not in your business.

So you need to commit enough time to do briefs as detailed as you can and don’t leave anything to chance. Definitely communicate effectively and always respect their commitments. 

4. Expect the unexpected, because at the end of the day curveballs happen. The most important thing is to keep the channels of communication open so that if things do go south for any reason, you have a strong team that you can trust and can lean on in such circumstances. That has been my experience with PrimePixels. 

Whatever they do, they will always do for your benefit, which really helps because nothing is too much. They’re always willing to negotiate and consider your opinion, your challenges and see how they can work together with you. It’s also important to notice that not everything they do will be a perfect fit for your business. 

5. There are certain things that you will still need to do yourself and you will probably have more joy doing certain things yourself, because although it’s great to have help, they are not specialists in your field. Some jobs are better off where you say that – Okay look, I’m better off doing this one and we can work on other jobs together. It’s just really keeping the channels of communication open and monitoring workflow which is really important.

6. Anything else you’d want to add?

This is my first experience with a virtual company and I cannot recommend it enough, I just really think that I must have struck it lucky. I’m sure not everyone works as professionally as PrimePixels but this is a fairly new concept in Southern Africa and I’ve been looking for ways to scale my business. I can honestly say I am so thrilled to come across this company and I can just tell they are going to go from strength to strength. 

It’s a real privilege to work with like-minded professionals who actually appreciate the small entrepreneur and the challenges that come with being an SME. There’s potential with SMEs to be real contributors to the economy, but it’s really difficult to scale without overcapitalising. That’s really what they have managed to assist me with. So it’s a great concept and I have found great joy working with them.